The Jester in Yellow

Yeah, I’m talkin’ about you!

It’s a rare breed of person that feels a need to create art. I use the term “creative person” to refer to it, since ‘artist’ usually conjures images of…well, someone who conjures images, with a brush. I’m relatively loose with the term “art.” To me, a creative type person is someone who needs to make art. You may know someone who makes art as a hobby, who picked up woodcarving for fun or something. An old woman who sews for necessity but likes to turn it into art, a architect who spices up their designs for fun. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re not necessarily creative type people. A person who incidentally makes art will see an opportunity to make it and say “That looks like fun, maybe even fulfilling.” And they might even be quite good at it.

A creative type person as I’m defining it needs to make art. They don’t become an architect because they’re good at it, or because it pays well, or even because they get to make art on the job. They become an architect because that design needs to exist and they have to be the one to do it or they’ll break down and cry. They’re not a creative type person because they do create, they’re a creative type person because creation is one of their needs.

I’m one of these creative type people. I need to create frequently or I enter a depression. There’s simply no way around it. If I am not making short stories, or novels, or CYOAs, or video essays, or whatever, I will break down at some point. Different creative type people might have different types of art they need to make. Some are rennaissance men who can dabble in many fields. Some are obsessed with a particular medium, even a particular genre. Me? I’m a writer. I have drawn, and it’s fun, but I don’t need to draw. I need to write. I’m lucky enough to just be able to say that I’m not particularly picky as to how that writing takes place. I think I would be able to fulfill this need as a writer for a video game, a video essayist, a speechwriter, a novelist, a nonfiction writer, etc.

One of the most important parts of writing is having someone to actually read your writing. Most of us authors don’t like to admit that, we like to say “Noo I would totally write just for myself”, and that IS true and something I HAVE done, in much the same way that I would totally hug my pillow and pretend it loved me if I was bereft of a significant other, and have.

Creative type people are rare, and it’s an exceptionally rare breed of creative person who can create happily with truly no hope of audience. Now don’t get me wrong, I think all of us creative types have done it before. But it’s not sustainable, even in comparison to the mercurial whims of your muse with an audience.

But there’s a sort of Maslow hierarchy here, y’know? To someone with no audience, having any audience is vital. But to someone with audience and audience alone, they’re still starving. It’s like going from having nothing to eat, to having nothing but a watermelon. The difference is impossible to overstate, and yet, you’re still starving to death. Y’know what’s terrifying? A silent audience that you know exists, but that is all.

I’ve continuously released projects over my lifetime, and I’ve found that even among friends and family, maybe about 1/5 people who you toss your works in front of will ever talk about it in any regard, to either you or others. When presented to strangers, that ratio can drop to 1/10,000 pretty quickly–in good conditions. Less if you’re unlucky.

I can’t really express how painful that is, other than to say that it feels very much like releasing it to nobody. Of course, in theory, there are people reading my work. And, in theory, I’m eating very tasty chocolate in an alternate dimension right now. Neither do much for me. A hundred thousand readers who silently consume and then discard my work without a word are about as meaningful to me as a watermelon on a desert island. Can’t tell you how much I would want it if I didn’t have it. But it seems weirdly insubstantial.

I can’t help but feel a great deal of ungratefulness expressing that. There’s something gross about it, y’know? It should matter a lot more to me than it does. From the analytics I’ve received, I’m pretty sure I have had at least five hundred thousand people consume my works, if you count repeat customers for different works. Probably around one hundred thousand if not. Isn’t that crazy? Two hundred years ago that was the population of a decently sized country.

I mean, just from my back of the napkin math, I think my pornography alone has been masturbated to at least a few thousand times. Wacky, right? Crass. I mean you should know by now that I’m not a very prudish. I feel like that’s an easy to grasp yardstick on how people have silently enjoyed my works. Literally a thousand people blowing ropes for me? Kinda empowering to be honest. Crazy to think about. Not nearly as impactful on me as the one comment I got from someone embarrassedly admitting she came while playing my CYOA so she could claim the extra point for doing so.

I’m not sure how many times people have read my works and laughed aloud, or cried, or put down their device, looked at the ceiling, and wondered. I have to imagine it’s a far greater number than the number of times I’ve ever been made aware of the occurrence. But let me put it this way: I have written a line with the hope that it would provoke one of those things, and received absolutely no feedback on said line, the vast majority of the time. Almost nothing I ever write gets any response whatsoever.

Which brings me to level 3. “That was good.” It’s hard to express how that sentence when said without further comment makes me feel. Again, to someone with a dead silent audience, it’s everything. To someone who actually receives it, it’s…Well, there’s more to be said about it than a watermelon. It provokes so many feelings in me. Let me go through a few, rapid fire.

• Joy. Oh my god, someone actually likes my work? It wasn’t all for nothing?
• Anger. What do you mean “that was good”, could you be a little more fucking specific? Would it kill you to list out one thing in particular you liked?
• Despair. Oh my god. They didn’t actually like any of the specific things I put into it, did they? They weren’t even paying attention. It actually was for nothing, I could’ve just written fucking nonsense and they would eat it up like slop.
• Guilt. I should be way more thankful for any response at all, let alone a positive one. Some people would kill for this. My past self would’ve killed for this.
• Self hatred. What, do I think I deserve a fucking essay? I’m just literally too full of myself to enjoy a compliment? What kind of asshole gets mad over a compliment because it’s not thorough enough?
• Shame. Maybe I just don’t do anything good enough to comment on. Maybe it was just a pity comment.

I say all this not because “level 3” is much harder for me to bear than levels 1 or 2. It isn’t, “that was good” is still WAY better than silence or no audience at all. Especially because it can bump the thread, contribute to a good rating, provoke other people to respond, etc. It really is just so much better than the previous levels. But I think non-creators can intuitively understand the frustration with silence or nonexistence. It can be hard for them to grasp just how difficult overly broad, simplistic praise is to receive. Especially if it’s ALL you receive. In fact, while Levels 1 and 2 remain difficult throughout my entire existence as a creator, I’ve found that once you hit level 4, level 3 simply becomes mildly disappointing. At level 5, I even begin to enjoy level 3 feedback. So don’t feel disuaded if that’s all you want to say to me. I’m actually probably going to enjoy it and nothing else. Yeah, it’s a watermelon, but as part of a otherwise balanced diet? Watermelons are a nice treat. But man, when I was stuck at just level 3…whuff, it was rough.

“Level 4”, then, is pointing out one or a couple of specific things you enjoyed.
“I liked the color theory”, “This line of dialogue was really funny”, “I’m really brainstorming over how this mystery could be solved”, stuff like that.

This is where stuff starts getting unambiguously positive. It’s always a joyous experience for me to see that someone has processed a specific, discrete element of my art, and enjoyed it. These discrete elements matter to me. I spend a lot of time crafting them just so. Saying “the work is good” is nice of you; saying “I like X discrete thing” is a gift. It proves to me that you were paying attention, and that my craftsmanship is not pointless. It also proves to me that I can use the concept of ‘building up’ the story, of dramatic inversions and echoing patterns, of referencing previous events and building up long arcing storylines that have satisfying beginnings, middles, and ends. “This is good” is a comment from timeless void. “I like X” means that when I use X later, you will remember and appreciate the contrast. Now I feel like the actual specific day-to-day writing I do matters.

“Level 5” I suppose would be understanding and communication around the broader construction and themes of the story, the connective tissue and thesis statements of it. Speculation on the meaning of the story, talk about the dynamics of the characters, appreciation for the particular writing techniques I use and the things I am going for. Level 4 is where I find daily motivation, but this is where I find meaning. To know that I’ve actually communicated, that my work has meant something to someone. That it’s actual art. I have little to say about this in the abstract other than that it makes me very, very happy, and I’m incredibly thankful to anyone who takes the time to do it.

I think Level 5 inherently includes a re-read of my work, rather than a single pass. Given the style of writing I’ve developed, which is heavily reliant on “rhyming” elements, callbacks, and recontextualization, re-reading is a pretty important facet of understanding my work, I believe. I think this primarily comes from how I enjoy media; I generally need to see it at least two times from start to finish before I feel like I understand it enough to feel what it means in a larger sense, or to put forward strong opinions. In that light, I feel like a re-read is important to enjoy my work in a fuller sense. But I understand that’s not how most people interact with media, and it sounds like a pretty big ask for the people who don’t. Maybe call we’ll call it “Level 5.5”, and it is something that is very gratifying to hear. Extraordinarily infrequent.

The hypothetical level 6, then, would be fan creation. People making things in response to my creation. Fan art, fanfiction, video essays, unofficial DLCs, stuff like that, which more popular, more talented creators tend to get–sometimes from me! I haven’t been the recipient of this very often, I could count the number of times it’s happened on one hand. I can say with no hesitation that it is as meaningful to me as level 5, if not moreso. If paired together, I think I would cry.

I realize now that throughout this adhoc leveling system, I’ve never addressed criticism. I guess I just don’t think about it very much at all. Very few criticisms I receive remain with me for more than a day, fewer make it a week. Well-meaning criticism is rare, useful criticism even moreso. Vitriol barely affects me. I don’t know why. I am quite defensive about my creations, actually. I feel my heartrate skyrocket and my hackles raise when I feel like it’s under attack in some manner. But oddly enough, someone saying “This is trash”, or even “this is trash, here’s why” have never provoked that response in me. I don’t know if that’s just because vitriolic people tend not to have a very good understanding of the thing they’re criticizing, but it seems likely to me. Often I don’t even feel like they’re targetting my work.

___

Somehow I’ve managed to make it this far without deleting all of this.
The truth is, I feel incredibly insecure about asking people to provide better feedback. Many years ago I gave up on even telling my friends and family about the creative works I make, or asking them to consume my creations in any way, largely because I was very disappointed with level 2 or level 3 feedback, and very averse to asking for more.
I’m still averse to asking for more.
This isn’t me asking for more!

But…

If one were to want to give an artist a gift, I think this is a pocket guide to doing so.